AMD posts loss, still beats street estimates

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has posted a net loss of $177 million for the fourth quarter of 2011 on revenue of $1.69 billion, with operating income of $71 million, still managing to beat analyst expectations.

AMD’s losses were mainly caused by $98 million in restructuring charges, a $209 million asset impairment writedown for Globalfoundries, $4 million for the loss from discontinued operations, $3 million on the amortization of acquired intangible assets and a loss on debt repurchase of $1 million.

Gross margin, however, was up one percent in the fourth quarter to 46 percent.

Yearly revenue for 2011 was $6.57 billion, flat year-over-year, with net income of $491 million and operating income of $368 million.

AMD CEO and president Rory Read lauded the firm for starting the year out “clear” on its priorities and opportunities and said he was continuing to build an AMD which was able to consistently deliver on its commitments.

Read also highlighted the success the firm had had with its lower powered Brazos platform noting, “AMD shipped more than 30 million APU’s in 2011, resulting in record annual notebook revenue.”

Indeed, AMD’s computing solutions segment grew two percent in terms of revenue in the fourth quarter, and seven percent year-over-year, driven by double digit growth in server and chipset revenue.

After a series of delays in getting its Interlagos and Valencia server chips to market, Read said AMD’s server business was also starting to re-gain momentum after delivering two consecutive quarters of strong growth.

Operating income for the segment was $165 million, compared with $149 million in Q3 2011 and $91 million in Q4 2010.

Meanwhile, AMD saw its graphics segment slide even further this quarter, posting a five percent decrease and 10 percent year-over-year. Operating income on the GPU side of AMD’s business was $27 million, compared with $12 million in Q3 11 and $68 million in Q4 10.Overall R&D spend was $358 million, 21 percent of net revenue.

Looking forward to its results for the fiscal first quarter ending in March, AMD predicted that it would continue to see revenue decline of eight percent, plus or minus three percent, compared with its fourth quarter. That would give the firm revenue of $1.55 billion for the first quarter, which just misses financial analyst’s expectations of $1.59 billion.

Operating expenses are expected to come to approximately $590 million, while gross margin is expected to drop to 45 percent.

Its good that AMD is getting better in the notebook segment. In the recent past I saw many notebooks with AMD platform in the market. The growth of desktop CPUs is going to very less. so only future for AMD is in the notebook/mobile segment.
IMO they should acquire ST ericsson and their mobile application processors and get into Mobile/Tablet CPU space.